


two idiots, chilling in an elevator, zero feet apart because they’re very gay

by V_fics



Series: V's Best Enemies fics [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode AU: s12e1-2 Spyfall, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Sexual Submission, Not Beta Read, Other, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23434381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_fics/pseuds/V_fics
Summary: The Master makes it into the elevator before Thirteen can close it.Inspired by Sacha Dhawan’s tweethere.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: V's Best Enemies fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998526
Comments: 30
Kudos: 149





	two idiots, chilling in an elevator, zero feet apart because they’re very gay

**Author's Note:**

> [Translated into Russian by the wonderful Linn!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9255929)
> 
> I’m almost sorry because my brain is FRIED and i wrote this in an hour with zero editing. Also the modern time for an elevator ride on the Eiffel Tower is like 15-20 minutes. I don’t know what they are in the 1940s but blep! It doesn’t matter because i don’t know what the passage of time feels like anyway!

There is an evolutionary instinct to freeze when you’re scared and your silly primitive brain thinks you’re in danger. Which she isn’t. But there’s still a rush of adrenaline when the Master charges after her that causes her hand to miss the elevator buttons. 1940s technology is terrible and the moment between her finally hitting the “close the freaking door” button and the door actually closing takes long enough that the Master manages to throw himself into the elevator and tackle her to the ground.

The doors rumble shut with a taunting screech of metal, and the Master stares down at her with a look that suggests he didn’t think he’d make it this far either.

She gives an obligatory struggle, because the Master or not, this body isn’t a hugger, and the Master’s ridiculous coat and extra inch of height are _heavy_ on top of her new smaller form.

They have an established dynamic and the Doctor’s always been the taller one. Save for the one or two or four times they weren’t.

“Get off!” she gripes, shoving up at his shoulders. Jeez, this uniform is even more of an eyesore up close. At least his hat fell off somewhere. The Master catches her wrists and slams them down against the floor. She surrenders, for a second, to collect herself and say, “You look ridiculous, by the way, and I hate it.”

The Master’s legs turn into a dead weight and the rickety old light of the elevator eclipses the back of his head and she knows he’s grinning at her.

”That was low, Doctor, even for you,” he mocks her with her own words. “What would your pets say?”

The heat that’s been steadily creeping up the collar of her dress shirt has been up until then embarrassment from being in close proximity to another person, but it rapidly turns to shame and she can’t look him in the eye anymore. Her gaze drifts over his shoulder to the ceiling corner. It had been a low blow, even by Gallifreyan standards. They didn’t have superficial prejudices, not when regeneration was an integral part of their society. To use other (primitive!) societies’ bigotry to incapacitate another, it was a very low blow.

Not that either of them had a history of playing fair. She might have been a bit too stung by the demonstration in the Adelaide Gallery, and a bit too caught up in the thrill of fighting dirty against the Master again. No more niceties. No more offers of friendship. He’d betrayed her for the last time.

But those learned morals settle back in, and the fury to make him feel even a fraction of the agony she felt is crushed by utter horror.

She apologises, even forcing herself to look back at his face, but the Master quirks his head and they’re in for an encore of the Gallery once again.

“What was that?” he asks innocently.

The Doctor glares and her lips thin into a tired line.

“I said ‘get off of me’.”

The perception that he’s in any way stronger than her is a human one. And yet the Doctor can’t bring herself throw him off. Alone, with no leverage over the other, any physical power imbalance is performative.

A lot of their relationship is.

“No, no,” the Master clicks his tongue in condescension and it’s surprisingly hard to say if the Doctor’s annoyed because she’s starting to despise when men look at her like she should stay in her place, or because it’s the Master and he’s always been an asshole. “I think you said something that starts with ‘I’m’ and ends with ‘sorry’.”

She glares. The shame has long since reached her cheeks and the fact that this has been a record for the amount of time someone has touched this new regeneration is not helping. But she could throw him out of the elevator shaft if she really wanted to. Which she doesn’t. And that’s really the problem, isn’t it.

“I’m sorry,” she says, clearly, meeting his eyes. Then she adds, just in case: “Master.”

It’s difficult to see in this lighting, but he’s got those big sad eyes that beguiled her previous body and still manage to do the same now, and any lingering anger that remains simmers down into the future.

“Thank you,” he says earnestly, and he lets her up.

She looks away and gets up to her feet. The elevator is still moving. It’s a long way down and they’ll have to see if she’s desperate enough to try and fling herself out to avoid being stuck in the cramped space for the rest of the trip. This body had practically been born falling and she has no desire to strike a new record for the “Most Amount of Time Spent Falling In A Single Regeneration (Culminative)”.

She finally turns back to him. He meets her gaze and gives a dramatic sigh, leaning himself against the elevator wall. She frowns, takes half a step over because the space is really damned small, and starts undoing the buttons on his longcoat.

The Master lets out a noise and sounds like a strangled cat.

“What are you doing?”

“I told you, you look hideous,” she says. “At least take off the military garb.”

“I never knew you were that assertive in this new regeneration.”

His eyebrows raise and where her previous incarnation would stammer himself into a flustered denial, she scoffs at him, wills away the heat on her cheeks, and thanks the universe for small mercies when the Master shrugs his arms out of the awful, awful coat.

She wonders if it’d be more cathartic to burn the fabric later or chuck it out a window now. She settles for tossing it into the farthest corner of the elevator, putting a grand total of three feet between them and the offending material.

The Doctor turns back, eyes the rest of his suit, and starts pulling the ranking pins from his jacket. The Master gives an amused chuckle and she contemplates stabbing him with the sharp ends.

“Is that all?” he asks, after she flings the metal into the corner of shame.

“Don’t be crass,” she steps away for the other wall.

There’s still a very distinct military style to his outfit that makes her stomach churn, but at the least the most obvious signs that he’s taking advantage of one of the darkest parts of human history that will haunt the Earth into the next century are gone now.

“What did you mean about Gallifrey?”

“What else could I have meant?” his tone changes but his demeanour does not. He knows things she doesn’t and he’ll gloat about it until she snaps. “It’s gone. Again. Not your fault this time, though. Or maybe it is.”

The suggestion rattles her and she digs her fingers into her coat. This body is so furious, born out of spite and rage and despair. All from the person standing here against her. As always.

“Who destroyed it?”

He’s lied to her before. She won’t believe him until she sees it for herself but this is a _game_ and she’ll play by his rules if it gets him to talk.

“No idea,” the Master says in a sing-song tone that conveys the exact opposite. “You should do some reconnaissance, if you get out of here alive. We could compare notes.”

He has to be lying, because if he isn’t, she’s going to kill him, and if he is, she’s going to kill him.

The Master takes a step towards her, and that’s all it takes to corner her against the wall. Damned primitive human architecture. The Doctor meets his eyes stoically and tries to hide the burning agony in her hearts.

“How do you feel right now?” he asks softly.

He might have sounded concerned, even kind, to anyone else but her. His big brown eyes waver with apparent worry and he lifts a hand to touch her face.

“Does it hurt?”

She can’t answer. Her mind roils with possibilities. If he’s lying, then he’ll laugh at her later and she’ll kick herself for trusting his word. If he’s telling the truth, then she doesn’t know what she’ll do. She’ll call her silence shock and start the slow, violent process of mourning by beating his fucking face in.

“Different now, is it? Being on the other side of the trigger.”

“I saved them.”

It’s the wrong thing to focus on. The Time War feels like ages ago. And it had been. Almost two thousand years into her past. She’s put Gallifrey behind her. She has to.

The Master sucks in a breath, gives a theatrical wince, and giggles, “Doesn’t look like it stuck, my dear.”

It’s getting hard to breathe, even though her respiratory bypass is far from kicking in. The elevator rumbles and everything is too small. He’s lying. He’s lied to her before. He’s lying to her now.

Oh, but denial is the first stage of grief, isn’t it?

“Get away from me.”

“No.”

The Master smiles when she punches him and he is still smiling when she screams at him and shoves him away and presses herself into the corner of this too small elevator and bites down onto her fingers so she can feel something besides her hearts shredding themselves to pieces because she had saved Gallifrey for _nothing_.

She doesn’t remember the moments between her yelling and sinking down to the dirty, uncleaned floor.

It’s unnecessary, this rage. She was never going to go home. Gallifrey stopped being home when they made her punch her way out of her own confession dial, even after everything she’d done to save them.

The Master is right. It hurts a lot more than when she was the one pushing that button to end it all.

“Tell me,” she whispers. She can’t look at him. No doubt he’s standing over her, delighting in her agony, like he always does. All they ever do is hurt each other. “Tell me it wasn’t you.”

The Master hesitates to answer, and in a clearer mind she might have given him the benefit of the doubt. Her eyes snap up, stinging red. The first time a new regeneration cries always hurts the most.

All of his theatric sadism has vanished. The Master isn’t ashamed, but he’s quiet and sombre and it hurts just as much as if he’d gloated over ruining her work.

_“Answer me!”_

“Yes,” he says at last. “I destroyed Gallifrey.”

She should get up. Punch him again. Or break the windows with his face and shove him out the lift. But she’s frozen, on the ground, looking up at him, and even though she’s physically below him, his shoulders are curling inwards in admissal and she is so tired.

“Why?” her voice cracks. Rage is temporary and hides a more lasting despair. “Why would you do that?”

The Master laughs, but it’s a broken one and she thinks he’s crying behind it. He’s scrambling to pick up the pieces of a mask and set themselves back into the days after the Time War, where he would hurt the Doctor without any sort of pity.

It hurts worse, because he remembers being her friend.

“Not telling you,” he says. It’s not an empty threat, but his delivery is hollow and he isn’t antagonising her for the fun of it in the same way that she would let him push her into apologising for breaking his perception filter.

They are too much the same. Except that the Master can admit he finds her hatred beautiful.

The Doctor shuts her eyes, pulls her knees up to her chest like she’s a kid again, and buries her face in her knees. They remain, in silence, for the rest of the ride.

The elevator stops, the doors open with a loud rankle of machinery, and when she looks up again, the Master is gone, only the coat and pins left on the floor to mark his presence.

She has to chase him down, cut him off before he gets to his TARDIS and kills Ada and Noor. There’s no time left to mourn. They never have the time to mourn. The Doctor doesn’t mourn, but she will.

Later, after she’s stranded the Master through seventy-seven years on Earth, and an indeterminate amount of time in the Kasaavin dimension, when she’s left her fam to explore another planet, she’ll walk into the ashes of the Citadel, and find her way back into the intact Matrix room. She will sit down in the rubble, in the remains of Time Lord history, and she will piece together what record she can recover from dust and cinders.

And she will count.

Much, much later, when the Master has her trapped in that very room, a psychic link tearing her away from the physical world, she’ll see the faces of one particular child and count those as well.

And before he tells her where that child has gone, after billions of years of history lost to greed, she will think, for one terrible moment, that he was right to undo her wrongs.

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry. there's a rebloggable version on tumblr [here](https://thoscheian.tumblr.com/post/614244013040648192). feel free to send me an angry anon. >.>;;;;
> 
> i was gonna put in stuff about how thirteen is actually really fucking touch starved but the angst ran away from me first


End file.
